Saturday, July 21, 2012

OK: I had a long, very dull post three-quarters written about how Jeter has no chance at Rose, because Joe Sheehan doesn't entirely dismiss it earlier this week. "Maybe a 5% chance, tops." I promise, it was a lousy post. I'll make it short: on the one hand, if Jeter came anywhere close, it's reasonable to believe that absolutely everyone at MLB would be doing everything possible to drag him across the finish line -- but on the other hand, there's just no way he's going to get close enough for that to kick in.

Instead, I'll check in on the other guy who I made a strong prediction about. I said last May that he wasn't going to make it, and then checked in again in September when he had improved his position. Well, that was then. He's now at 2762...nope, he got three hits tonight, so that's 2765. However, it's only 42 hits this year, and he's been pretty awful in a part-time job (he improved tonight from 286 OBP/347 SLG). A full time year for Johnny Damon these days is about 150 hits...it seems unlikely that he has another of those to come, doesn't it? Still, he's not quite out of it yet. He needs something; he needs to put together a couple of good months. It's also easy to imagine him getting to the end of the line really fast. I'll be watching.

3 comments:

Using the "Bill James "Favorite Toy" projection tool (available here: http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/billjames), we get this:

"Based on his age, your player can be expected to play for 2 more years, at an average of 151.5 per year. At that rate, he will finish at 3068 for his career. He has a 79 percent chance to reach 3000."

I think a 79% chance of Johnny Damon making it to 2,000 hits is way high, by the way.

Yeah just can't see it happening for Jeter. This would take at least 6 more FULL years, and Omar Vizquel aside, there is just not a big market for 44 year old shortstops. Surely Jeter wont even be able to play shortstop full-time in the majors in 2-3 years. So where can you put him? First base? DH? Right now his OPS+ is barely skimming the century mark so it stretches credulity to think where that number is 5 years from now is going to be good enough to put at an offense-oriented position on any team in the major leagues.